I'm sick all the time! 10 courses of antibiotics in the last 15 months. Please help!

I sleep very little and have tried everything to remedy it, so I empathise. I don’t think it necessarily helped my sleep, but prebiotics seem to be associated, in some cases, with improved immune systems. I take one called Bimuno but I’m sure there are many.
eg of papers:-

I did ear plugs for a while. I didn’t find it helped in my situation.

I’m also super diligent about this, but I do touch my face a bunch. We’ve got automatic hand sanitizers put around the office and I use them often. We also have our office admin wipe down all handles once a day to try to prevent the spread of illinus.

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I have sleep trouble most of my life, I don’t want to switch off, I want to keep going every night until it’s literally impossible to stay awake. These last maybe three, four years when I started training and listening to podcasts I realised that a podcast or radio or audiobook turned the lights off in my head so fast it’s like a revolution.

Now, if I’m good, I can hit the sack as early as ten and be asleep within twenty minutes, sometime five. Just put some earphones in and something fairly innocuous on and I’m away with the fairies.

Not sure that waking up being strangled with the lead is a positive outcome, but that’s rare these days :smile:

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How about a fecal transplant? If your gut microbiome wasn’t ruined before, since birth or early age, it sure is after all that antibiotics. I’d do it, if I was as desperate as you are. Pro- and prebiotics alone don’t do much if you’re severely messed up and lack diversity in your gut.
The topic in research is new and is not standard of care for more than a couple of conditions, but everything points towards gut microbiome being more important for all kinds of different conditions and diseases than was previously thought. I’d be surprised if it didn’t have impact on the immune system.

I’ll be following this thread and wish you all the best!

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Do you have a nebulizer? Nebulizing saline solutions mobilises secretion and helps the sinuses to clean themself (also before they actually get infected).

I talked about this a little on the last podcast. I’m totally willing to do this. If anyone has access to Chris Froome’s poop let me know. My wife has more energy than anyone I know (works out more than me, sleeps 3 hours less than me and has energy all day long) so I’d like hers if I can get it!

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Good to hear you’re mainly plant based and have now looked to remove dairy, although perhaps it’s not a remedy by reducing the inflammation in your body you’ll allow it to better focus on the sicknesses. Might take some time to settle in but definitely worth sticking with.

Travel and aeroplanes get me every time.

Have you looked into hormones, it’s a massive subject but if your system isn’t balanced… by sleep, diet, stress, work, historic issues, to much exercise, to little exercise etc etc… then there can for sure be ongoing wider health issues but back to my first statement, by returning to basics this will help natural balance.

Start the day with lemon or lime water, pinch of salt and maybe a slice of ginger. Leave the coffee for performance requirements.

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I have not. Would this add anything if I’m already doing saline rinses via a neti pot? I use the Navage and it always gets a lot of stuff out. https://www.navage.com/

You had to go to poop town! :joy:

Actually, I’ve heard very impressive claims about fecal transplant, and I’d be interested in seeing if it lives up to the hype. Also, apparently there is a less dramatic version of seeding the gut biome with donor bacteria where you just orally take something called…crapsules. If the results are as good as they say, I could suspend my disgust at the idea.

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I have had my testosterone tested. Although it was low it wasn’t below a normal range. That was also tested before I got my sleep apnea under control so I’d suspect it’s higher now.

Sounds like something I should do for the podcast. I will take upon me the poop of olympians from around the globe in the interest of science!

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@Nate_Pearson saw your response to my original comment about air quality. Cleanliness is only part of it, and you touched on the second…dryness.
Do your symptoms get better in humid climates like hawaii and other places?

The reason I ask is I suffer from dry air based on my location and having originally grown up on the coast. I now have asthmatic symptoms as a result of the cold and dry air, which flair up in the winter. But when i go to Tulsa and race in 95% humidity I feel like a champ with zero symptoms. When we got our new house I ensured that the master bathroom had a steam shower installed. Do that a couple of times a week in the winter just to ensure everything isn’t drying out. That and I carefully monitor in-home humidity now.

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I do feel WAY better when I leave Reno in terms of allergies. I do get sick a lot during the winter when there are low allergens in Reno :frowning:.

My CPAP has a humidifier on it so I do get humidified air all night long. In the old TR offices, I had 3 “full house” humidifiers installed to try to help me and another employee who had bad asthma. We got the office humidity from 20% up to around 60-70%. We didn’t notice a difference in our health.

I’m using the nebulizer for preventing the bacterial infection, when I experience the first symptoms of a cold. The mist gets everywhere (at least that’s what it feels like :sweat_smile:)

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I wish my boss cared about my health that much…
I swear the amount of dust in our offices contributes to my symptoms.

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Go team science!

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It’s in your bosses best interest! Healthy and happy work force does a better job.

We also installed 16 solar tubes in our new office to bring in natural daylight. We don’t have to have the florescent lights on at all. It helps with circadian rhythm and even in the winter they just let the office go darker early in the morning and late at night.

They cost around $35k but I suspect I’ve more than made that up in terms of employee happiness.

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Hey @Nate_Pearson, sorry to hear about your issues.

Secondly, I am not a doctor, so below information is only my personal opinion.

I was in the same boat over the past two years, where I’d get mildly sick every couple of months and get something nasty every six.

Personally, I attribute that to my immune system being completely depleted. Together with my training regime being 10-13 hours a week on top of 9-5 job, I simply did not let my body recover itself. What didn’t help was the fact that I was not eating enough.

Silly enough, and that in retrospect makes a lot of sense, my health has gotten a lot better after I injured my back and was unable to train “properly” over the past 6 months. I’ve been resting a lot and eating well, which helped me to get through Australian winter without getting sick ( first one for me ). I am now slooooowly getting back into my training routine and outside of the occasional back soreness, feeling better than I’ve had in a many years.

In your case, you

  1. Have a young family;
  2. Manage a very successful company that brings its own daily dose of stress;
  3. Train.

On top of that, you’re on a course of antibiotics. While they do save lives, they also wreck havoc in your immune system.

What I am trying to convey here is that perhaps you should take a break from training over this winter (starting pretty much now), finish your course of antibiotics and let your body heal itself.
Come Spring time, there is a great chance that you will feel recovered and jumping out of your skin to get back into training. You will also earn bucket load of brownie points from your family. :slight_smile:

Apologies if my rant went for a bit too long, it’s just I know exactly how frustrating it is not to be getting any break from sicknesses.

Tim.

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My boss prides himself on the fact he’s “never taken a sick day in my career!”
He is 100% patient zero anytime our teams get sick. Our collective response when he’s not around is always “you might not have taken any, but how many have you caused…?”

I hear you on this and that’s a worry of mine too. Over the last 12 years of cycling I’ve taken a 1.5 year break (to build TR), a one year break (first child born) and another one year break (second child born).

Although they weren’t completely “restful” years I still got sick at the same frequency.

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